Upgrading from twin HD displays. Anyone using curved ultra wide 21:9 monitor?

[Bret Williams]

The late 2016 MBPro 15”. Top Model with the 4gig GPU. Powerful enough laptop for the screens and processing, but I don’t care for the keyboard, the touch bar is kinda useless, and the TB3 ports are ridiculously loose. Especially on the right side. I don’t care for the sound of the trackpad either. I’m using a TB3 dock now (not in the pic) and TB3 to TB2 adapters and they constantly lose connection when the computer goes into sleep. Sometimes you have to reboot computer or any combination of drives and dock to get it all running normal again. Never had issues like that with my old 2012 iMac.

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[Eric Santiago]

Thanks Brett.
If anyone has any experience with the nMP with any of the two (Dell and LG) please chime in.
Im about to go into renovation mode at home and would love to squeeze a purchase in before my wife takes over my wallet 😛
LOL!

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Eric Santiago] “If anyone has any experience with the nMP with any of the two (Dell and LG) please chime in.”

I run mine from a Tube.

Works great. I also use it as a hub for USB/whatevers sometimes.

[Les Wilson]

Just to follow up. I love the curved 38. Period. Love love love. Made FCP much more fun than on the twins. In fact I like the change it brings to everything.

I switched from a cheese grater to an 8-core nMP plus TB2 Raid from G-Tech. But the nMP kept freezing up. 10-20 times a day. Couldn’t even run to do a time machine backup. But only the UI froze. System kept running.

I returned it today for refund but now I’m stuck with a TB2 Raid and Dock. Display is Display port and USB-C. But it kinda makes no sense to consider an iMac Pro now since I am committed with a $1K monitor. There’s a Mac Mini or MBP or gamble on another nMP. Hmmmmm

Is it common for Mac Pro to be such a piece of junk or is it just the luck of the draw and I got a lemon?

[Les Wilson]

EPILOG: I did much searching and found a plethora of posts complaining of freezes related to the graphics cards. Some correlate it to particular monitors and got stability by changing monitors. Worst are 4K. So forget the nMP. Going the route of top line MacBook Pro as desktop and color correction monitor. Unfortunately I already have TB2 dock and RAID. Will make it work. Using 13″ air to drive the 38″ curved monitor. Solid as a rock. Impressed. YMMV.

[Jeremy Garchow]

Really glad you like the monitor. They are very nice!

[Les Wilson] “EPILOG: I did much searching and found a plethora of posts complaining of freezes related to the graphics cards. Some correlate it to particular monitors and got stability by changing monitors. Worst are 4K. So forget the nMP. “

I have a Tube and I don’t experience freezes. Early on, there was one batch of D700 graphics cards that were bad, and Apple replaced them.

https://www.macrumors.com/2016/02/06/late-2013-mac-pro-video-issues-repair-program/

[Les Wilson]

Yes, I was shocked to get a refurb unit from Apple exhibiting the D500/D700 card symptoms that were fixed in that recall. Apple Store said date of manufacture was April 2018 so old. When I noticed the recent MBP speed bump model could be configured to 32MB and had i9 processor and would make a nice color correction monitor, it made sense as a desktop CPU. Don’t have to use the most horrible keyboard in the history of the world and garbage track pad. Close the lid and dock the sucker. Now all my components are new and from the same era or in the case of the TB2 dock and RAID, same era minus 1. LOL

Thanks for all the help.

[Les Wilson]

UPDATE: According to Dell, the U3818DW is not compatible with what they refer to as “Non-standard hardware and proprietary software”. They made it clear they only test on Windows. I’m on my own with any problems.

So with a new MPB 15, first thing I notice is that the USB-C connection on the Dell supplies enough power to charge the laptop. Next thing I notice is that the Dell keeps waking the system from Shutdown and during sleep, it wakes itself up every 60 seconds to complain there’s no signal. Unfortunately it wakes up the TB2 RAID which sleeps just before the 60 second monitor wake call so it goes on and off all the time while sleeping and after shutdown.

Apple is looking into it but it appears that the Dell U3818DW is not compatible with the Mac. For all I know it could have been the problem with the Mac Pro. I have now idea about the variants from HP, LG, Viewsonic and ASUS that use the same panel. Buyer beware.

Good news is that a USB HUB lets me charge the MBP and drive the monitor via DP.